005-059
Date: Sunday, June 13, 1971 - 3:09pm - 3:22pm
Participants: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger
Location: White House Telephone
Nixon: Hello?
White House Operator: Mr. President, I have Dr. Kissinger
calling you.
Nixon: OK.
White House Operator: Thank you.
Nixon: Hello?
Kissinger: Mr. President?
Nixon: Hi, Henry, how are things in California?
Kissinger: Well, I just got here, and I’m going to leave
very early in the morning, so I’ll be back in the early afternoon.
Nixon: Oh, I see. I see.
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Nixon: OK, fine.
Kissinger: The ... I understand you’ve talked to.
Nixon: Yeah, Haig was, I talked to him about the.
Kissinger: To Haig already, and I just wanted to.
Nixon: Yeah, yeah.
Kissinger: To check in. Actually, things are fairly quiet.
We’ve got the casualties now.
Nixon: Mm-hmm.
Kissinger: And unfortunately, they’re higher than what
I told you yesterday. They’re about 23.
Nixon: Mm-hmm.
Kissinger: But still, that’s a low figure.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: That’s just four above what we had.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: They must have picked up some missing in action.
The trouble with the daily casualties is that they don’t reflect the ones that
died that were wounded the previous week.
Nixon: Yep, yep. Well, on the other hand, my God,
Henry, to 19, 23, good heavens.
Kissinger: Oh, yeah.
Nixon: It’s just down to nothing.
Kissinger: That’s right.
Nixon: I mean it’s.
Kissinger: And the more I’ve thought about Le Duc Tho
coming west.
Nixon: Mm-hmm.
Kissinger: I’m not saying they’re going to accept it,
but if they were just going to kick us in the teeth, they wouldn’t leave him
there.
Nixon: No. No.
Kissinger: So they’re at least going to explore.
Nixon: Yeah. Well, I—particularly if our Chinese friends
lean on him a little, he will.
Kissinger: That’s right, and he’s stopping in.
Nixon: And they just might lean on him a little.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kissinger: Well, we’ll get the answer in a week or so.
Nixon: Well, that’s—Haig was very disturbed by that
New York Times thing. I thought that.
Kissinger: Well, Mr. President, I think.
Nixon: Unconscionable damn thing for them to do. Kissinger:
It is unconscionable [unclear].
Nixon: Of course, it’s, it’s, it’s unconscionable on
the part of the people that leaked it. Fortunately, it didn’t come out in our administration.
Kissinger: That.
Nixon: That appar—according to Haig, it all relates
to the two previous administrations.
Kissinger: —that.
Nixon: Is that correct?
Kissinger: That is right.
Nixon: But I hope the—but I—my point is it—are any of
the people there who participated in this thing, who—in leaking it? That’s my
point. Do we know?
Kissinger: In public opinion, it actually, if anything,
will help us a little bit, because this is a gold mine of showing how the
previous administration got us in there.
Nixon: I didn’t read the thing. Tell—give me your
view on that in a word.
Kissinger: Oh, well, it just shows massive mismanagement
of how we got there. And it pins it all on Kennedy and Johnson.
Nixon: [laughing] Huh. Yeah!
Kissinger: And McNamara. So from that point of view, it
helps us. From the point of view of the relations with Hanoi, it hurts a
little, because it just shows a further weakening of resolve.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: And a further big issue. [Pause.]
Nixon: I suppose the Times ran it to try to—try to
affect the debate this week or something.
Kissinger: Oh, yes. No question about it. Nixon:
Well, it—I don’t think it’s going to have that kind of effect.
Kissinger: No. No. Because it’s—in a way, it shows ...
what they’ve tried to do—I think they outsmarted themselves, because they had
put themselves—they had sort of tried to make it “Nixon’s War,” and what this massively
proves is that, if it’s anybody’s war, it’s Kennedy’s and Johnson’s.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: So that these Democrats now bleating about
where it went wrong.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: —or what we’re doing wrong, this graphically
shows that—that who—who is responsible for the basic mess.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: So I don’t think it’s having the effect that
they intend.
Nixon: Well, you know ... it’s—it may not have the
effect they intend. They—the thing, though, that Henry, that to me is just
unconscionable, this is treasonable action on the part of the bastards that put
it out.
Kissinger: Exactly, Mr. President.
Nixon: Doesn’t it involve secure information, a lot
of other things? What kind of—what kind of people would do such things?
Kissinger: It has the most—it has the highest classifications,
Mr. President.
Nixon: Yeah. Yeah.
Kissinger: It’s treasonable. There’s no question it’s
actionable. I’m absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security
laws.
Nixon: What—what do we do about it? Don’t we ask for
an.
Kissinger: I think I—I should talk to Mitchell.
Nixon: Yeah.
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Nixon: No, I think you should. You tell Mitchell that.
Kissinger: And this is not—an occasional leak is bad enough.
Nixon: Yeah. Yeah.
Kissinger: But this is everything the Defense Department
possessed.
Nixon: Yeah. Let me ask this: Call Mitchell. I think
you should talk to Mitchell and ask him about his just calling this—getting
this fellow in on the purpose of ... this was a security leak, and we want to know
what does he have, did he do it.
Kissinger: Right.
Nixon: And put him under oath.
Kissinger: That’s right. I think we ought to do that.
I think we ought to wait until after.
Nixon: Another thing to do would be to have a
congressional committee call him in.
Kissinger: I think we ought to do it after Wednesday,
Mr. President.
Nixon: A congressional committee could call him in,
put him under oath, you know, and then he’s guilty of perjury if he lies.
Kissinger: But I think we ought to wait until after the
vote before they get it all confused.
Nixon: Oh, I agree. Well, you couldn’t do it before
then anyway, but, you know that—to get it all set up.
Kissinger: [Unclear] begin the investigation.
Nixon: Because you’ve got to have the questions and
the investigations and know what it is. Well, we’re not going to get disturbed.
These things happen, you know. Clifford pops off and this guy pops off. I would
think it would infuriate Johnson, wouldn’t you?
Kissinger: Oh, God. Basically, it doesn’t hurt us domestically.
I think—I’m no expert on that—but no one reading this can then say that this
President got us into trouble. I mean, this is an indictment of the previous administration.
It hurts us with Hanoi because it just shows how far our demoralization has
gone.
Nixon: Good God.
Kissinger: But basically, I think the decision they have
to make is, do they want to settle with you? They know damn well that you’re
the one who’s held firm and no matter how much anyone else is demoralized,
doesn’t make any difference.
Nixon: Yeah. Right. Right. Well, you’ll find things
out there pleasant enough.
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Editor’s note: While the National Archives log for this
tape indicates a deletion of 7 seconds, the audio file indicates a deletion of
1 minute, 7 seconds.
Nixon: Well, that’s a long trip for you, but I
wouldn’t—that’s—and I—Don’t worry about this Times thing. I just think we’ve
got to expect that kind of crap, and we just plow ahead, plow ahead. [Unclear.]
Kissinger: Well, Mr. President, if we succeed in two out
of three, as you said.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: —this summer.
Nixon: Yeah. Yeah.
Kissinger: Well, this will look like pygmies.
Nixon: If we can—[chuckles]. But, boy, you’re right
about one thing. If anything was needed to underline what we talked about
Friday—or Saturday morning, about ... about really ... really cleaning house
when we have the opportunity, by God, this underlines it.
Kissinger: Oh, yes.
Nixon: And people have got to be put to the torch for
this sort of thing. This is terrible.
Kissinger: [Actor Freeman] Gosden was on that plane with
me and he.
Nixon: Freeman?
Kissinger: Yeah.
Nixon: Yeah, he’s a great fellow.
Kissinger: Oh, he worships you.
Nixon: What did he think about all of this stuff?
Kissinger: He said it’s just what you have to put up with.
He said he could never imagine it. And he said, well, Dulles—he blames the State
Department, which is wrong in this case, because they had nothing to do with
this one.
Nixon: No. I know. Kissinger: But he said Dulles
always used to say that he had to operate alone because he couldn’t trust his
own bureaucracy.
Nixon: [laughing] Yeah, I know.
Kissinger: I said, well, that was good for Dulles, but
we pay for it now, because we’re stuck with the bureaucracy.
Nixon: That’s right. That’s right. Well, I just wish
that we operated without the bureaucracy.
Kissinger: [laughing] Well, Mr. President.
Nixon: We do.
Kissinger: [Laughs.] All the good things that are being
done.
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: —are done without.
Nixon: We do. We do. We do. Well, anyway, I’ll tell
you what: On the Mitchell thing, I’d just have them—have him examine what the
options are.
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Nixon: And the Times will justify it on the basis
that it serves the national interest. Is that right?
Kissinger: Of course.
Nixon: My God! My God! You know, can you imagine the
New York Times doing a thing like this ten years ago? Even ten years ago?
Kissinger: Mr. President—and then when McCarthy accused
them of treason, they were screaming bloody murder. This is treason!
Nixon: That’s right. No, whatever they may think of
the policy, it is treasonable to take this stuff out and—
Kissinger: That’s right. Oh, it’s one thing to.
Nixon: It serves the enemy.
Kissinger: Another thing to print ten pages of top secret
documents that are only about two or three years old. Well, they have nothing
from our administration, so actually, I’ve read this stuff. We come out pretty well
in it.
Nixon: [Chuckles.] Well, somebody over there has got
the stuff that we've got, although we—I asked Haig about that, and he said,
well, look, our file as far as the White House is concerned, we’re pretty damn secure.
On the other hand, of course, naturally whenever I’ve had to call Rogers and
Mel [Laird] in on some of these, on Laos and Cambodia, you can be sure all
that’s in some file.
Kissinger: But Mr. President, all the big things you've
done in the White House. And those files will leave with you.
Nixon: Yeah. That’s right.
Kissinger: And go to the Nixon Library.
Nixon: But what I meant, though, that’s true of the
files, but I mean, these guys of course will have made in their own
records—they’ll indicate what I’ve ordered, you know.
Kissinger: Oh, they indicate what you ordered, but they
weren’t in on the reasoning.
Nixon: Yeah. Well, let’s not worry about that.
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